Alison Redick is an assistant professor of women’s studies and a medical historian at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York and says, in this piece featured on the Fox News site ..

“Given that testosterone is not an exclusively male hormone — both male and female bodies produce testosterone and estrogen — where do we draw the line? -And trying to draw that line is always going to be a problem, regardless of what someone’s biology indicates”

“Gender is determined by social as well as biological factors, how you perceive yourself and how you were raised,” she said. “Whether her chromosomal sex is XX or XY, Caster Semenya appears always to have identified as female, and tests are not going to change that.”

And even if the tests can prove something (or nothing) – hasn’t this case been handled about as badly as it could be ?

59 Responses to “How do you decide someone’s gender ?”

I guess zero would be people who were born physically and chemically with both genders. The rest of us, I think, fall on one side of the other to varying degrees, depending on chemistry. I think if you fall on either side of this scale, you are a man or a woman. A woman that is closer to the middle would still be a woman. I am not a scientist, chemist, or a doctor, this is just a theory of mine, I could be totally wrong and would welcome some enlightment if that is the case.

Ms. Semenya’s case was handled abominably, but I can’t say I’m surprised. This whole thing should have been private,at least until something definite was known. In fact, it should have stayed private once the outcome of tests was known, but that would be too much to expect.

This should only be an issue for those who were born with both sets of genitalia, hermaphrodites. they are the only people who should be given a choice. If you have a man who really wants to be female, but was born a male, actually even encouraging this is only enabling the mentally ill. It’s like if a white person wished they were black, or a black person wished they were white. But when you’re a hermaphrodite, that’s a completely different situation, and those people should be given the choice to be one or the other, or to remain both.

I agree in large part with Steve. There are cases where newborns have deformities of single sex genitalia and the available surgical options for restoring the birth sex or altering six come into consideration. However, the individual does not participate in that decision – parents & doctors decide.

Unless hormone levels are artificially regulated, how would such an individual even know of this transgenderification? Should such individuals who compete in sports unaware of a decision in which they did not participate be responsible for it when it takes invasive medical tests to establish that such an event took place in the past?

This case has been handled badly enough. By all means she is entitled to her gold. If she is twin sex, it won’t change that fact because she will still be first in that category too.

Blame the games authorities. They are lying. It must be something they new about and they should decide on the basis of such categories. Twin sex is not a new phenomenon. Her case is not as bad as that of the historical female pope.

@ Tom D Ford
Revisit your history brother or find an honest Catholic Priest or a bishop. Promise not laugh because it was no laughing matter. Sure it did happen although this bit is under the carpet now. She became pregnant and No one would have known about it and imagine the shock when she underwent an emergency delivery in the open air while she was on her papal (mamal?) duties. That’s how they knew.

According to that bit of unholy history she was sponsored by a group of Catholic hawks at the time. It is all history we have now even though I guess they must have known how she got pregnant as well. It is there in the early history of the church way back before the Reformation period. As a matter of fact, it was a scandal. I do not know how many women and men were involved in that conspiracy.

Cheers to Semenya, shame on this whole scandal. The young deserve our encouragement, not mean spirited lookie-loos. Perhaps if prize money were not part of sport, we wouldn’t care so much about gender.

One of the most famous speeches by a US woman about gender roles is more than a hundred years old. Accused of being unfeminine, former slave Harriet Tubman describes her muscle-building back breaking labor and poses the question, and ain’t I a woman?

Where is the intolerance and homophobia concerning a subject which that doesn’t apply to? If this person is really male, then they are cheating, by competing in a woman’s race, as men are stronger and faster than women. That’s the concern. Say if this were a case of a not a hermphrodite, which only the tests concluded, but instead a male pretending to be a woman. Would you have no problem with that? Do you let your kids cheat in school as well?

In reality, it should have never gotten this far. With all the past cases, a simple test should be administered to every athlete as part of the drug screening to see if an athlete falls within normal hormonal guidelines. If they don’t, they don’t compete. Male or Female! Caster Semenya’s , coaches, administrators, doctors, South Africa’s sports organization should have all caught this irregularity years ago. They should be the ones that are embarrassed and guilty of fraudulent activities and making this young person suffer through this. They are the root cause of the problem. They had to know that the testosterone levels were to high and at 18 Caster should have know that things are not right. Now they are all trying to cover up their lies and blame the rest of the world. Remove the medal and ban from any sports activity all those individuals that led Caster to a poor decision in life.

BTW – Many years ago I was watching a late night medical show and it was a story about a girl who was suspected of having a tumor. She had exploratory surgery and it was found to be a testicle. This case was different, though, because this girl looked very feminine, and she did have ovaries. She did take a peek at her records, because her parents and doctor had not told her the truth of the matter, and she did freak out a bit before they reassured her that she was still in every way a girl.

It has been stated that if the external genitalia is that of a woman, then she is a woman, but is it possible to be externally a woman, and have all the chemical attributes of a man inside? Should we go by what blood tests say, or what the body looks like? Does this mean it would be more fair for her to compete against other men? Or does this mean her abilities are in between, stronger and faster than a woman, weaker and slower than a man? It really isn’t as simple as I thought. It just doesn’t seem fair that her victory has been so bitter.

@Patti
All our lives are in gray areas just as we all have the gray matter; so’s the monkeys. It is not always true that as a man I can outran every woman or outreason her. We forge ahead by making compromises which makes things you would call foolish come out true.

This sexist thing has to go away so that all can excel according to their natural abilities. As for the twin sexed, I think that they are sometimes stronger than we are. Imagine how we fret over small things and yet quite a good number of them emerge from a position of spiritual strength despite our mouthing at them. Its not easy to live under such circumstances for us ‘normal’ people and stripping her/him of the gold meddle makes us seem even more weaker and defensive.

Come to think about it Patti, they are lucky because unlike us they can choose their gender. Where is ‘cheating’ coming from?

All successful athletes have physical advantages over other people: longer legs, greater lung power, whatever. Some of it is the result of training, but basically it’s genetic. Otherwise we could all become Olympic athletes if we had the right training!

This particular athlete apparently has certain masculine traits which give her an advantage over other female athletes. But if we outlaw her we should also outlaw the tall long-legged athletes whose physique gives them an extra chance in the marathon, or the thick-set heavy men who physique gives them advantage in the weight lifting.

Athletes, except for equestrians, have been separated by gender to avoid at least some of the bias. Obviously, some athletes are better than others. But the gender-based bias is supposed to be taken out, in sports where this matters.

Reading the blog, the women seem more concerned about the person’s feelings rather than the potential for unfair competitive advantage, more willing to let her compete against other women.

Well then, surely this is no problem for the male athletes. I say, ask the female athletes what they think. Do they agree with the female bloggers on WHYS? Are they willing to race against a competitor with a gender-based advantage?

I live in a small place and I run 800, 1500 and 3000m races. We are only one or two girls to compete on these distances, so we are often told to run with boys. It is not a problem at all, neither for the boys, nor for us girls. And this must be the case in many small places around the world. In my opinion, gender separation is useless, and even counterproductive for women, as they have no incentive to perform better. We should classify the results the way we do in football : first league, second league, etc. In such a classification, an athlete like Caster Semenya would have no problem at all, as she would probably be upgraded according to her performances.

We all think that men are bigger and stonger than women. However, how many men could boast of running 800m in less than 1min 54sec ? How many men can run 100m in less than 10.50s ? No ordinary male athlete can do that, only champions can. When Usain Bolt makes world records, he is a hero. When a female athlete makes records, she is a suspect.
It is weird that the sport authorities only test female athletes to check their feminity. Why don’t they test male gymnasts, too ? Indeed, as women’s muscle are more flexible, it give them an advantage as gymnasts. One could consider that male gymnasts with female-like muscles have an unfair advantage against other competitors.

I feel it’s only reasonable that the issue of intersexual competitors is discussed. Perhaps some regulation will come out of it. But it shouldn’t be about individual cases. Proper and well led debate could avoid that the whole world is talking about Caster Semenya, Santhi Soundarajan or Foekje Dillema and judging them on something they can’t change.

To me this person is first and foremost a human being. What concerns me most is whether she has lived as a woman all her life or as a man. Whether or not she has more testosterone should not be the only factor in determining her eligibility to compete as a woman. If she has lived as a woman and has always seen herself as a woman then to me she is a woman and deserves to be treated as such. If not then I suppose some of these criticisms are fair game.

If we start measuring gender by a single criteria like testosterone then we may have to revisit some other very successful female althletes to question whether they had an unfair advantage against other women. Why should anyone begrudge her her medal and humiliate her with insensitve comments about her body parts? On the contrary we should feel compassion towards her for the very reason that her life must be a little more complicated than ours.

There are many female athletes who are almost like men and I trust all of them have been tested both externally and internally for proving their sex! Leave this poor dame alone to let her lead a peaceful life. She is likely to be gawked at by people where ever she goes and you can imagine how traumatizing it will be for her. I urge the South African government to give this human being some form of anonymity. All senses of human beings are almost the same irrespective of whether they are Caucasian, African, Indian, hermaphrodite, bisexual, homo-sexual or whatever.

If a sports organization is going to conduct drug testing on all athletes, then a gender test should be included at the time, never after the competition has already taken place. Singling-out Caster Semenya, a gifted and hard working athlete, for such testing is humiliating and discriminatory. It is another example of the slavemaster-like attitude of many sports organizations in which the athlete’s basic human right to have control over their bodies is violated.

Its not about race but gender confusion and how in the current millennium sports authorities are not yet aware that we might be having more than two gender types. I wonder given that sport is as old as agriculture. They have a very weak case which is making them uneasy because an automatic ban on twin sex will be scandalous issue . In any case they now have a starting point. If I were them, a cursory look at at this blog could be of much needed help. Seriously though, I doubt that gold medal can be said to have been stolen.

All the competitors, in any kind of competition (sports or any other), must have to take medical tests including the gender test before the competition; Once declared fit and eligible to participate, no further controversy or dispute should be admissible.

I think the worst thing about this has been the sensationalist media coverage. I think about the Indian athlete who committed suicide in a similar situation. There should be more respect for these intimate matters.

The South African athletic association must bear the main blame though. They could have spared Semenya this huge distress by being upfront from the start. As it is, they’re now playing the racist card again, refusing to acknowledge their own dishonesty.

International athletics bodies should act to ensure that no one need ever be publicly exposed over this issue. They should act preventively instead of dithering after the fact.

As to the question: what constitutes a woman? Well, there are many subtleties nowadays, and these should be heeded. But in sport it’s a question of an unfair physical advantage, and that’s a valid point.

i will not get into Ms Semenya’s gender status. My issue with this whole situation is how it has been handled by the athletics body & the media. I find it appalling that the results of the tests carried out have been made public. This is an extremely personal issue the the fact that the media is carrying out opinion polls on it is reprehensible. My heart goes out to Ms Semenya, she has been failed by every person who was supposed to look after her interests, the South African athletics body, coaches, team officials, medical staff who should have tested her in confidence, the world athletics body for not only missing her situation but conducting the tests in a public manner & failing to protect her privacy, the media & in reflection us, the consumers of media for eating up every spoonful that’s been thrown to us.

I think it is only fair that women compete against women in order to have a level playing field.
If Athletics South African really cared about Semenya’s feelings, they could have conducted these tests in-house to avoid putting her in this situation. They just wanted an Olympic gold medal for their country. Well they did get but at what price?? is it really worth putting your girl under all this torment? Leonard Chuene pretended to be resigning from IAAF board because of the tests and now since the damage is done he is going back to the IAAF board. How sad!!!!!

Whats between their legs is a good start….what are we going too..male, female..other? hermaphoradite? I bet most of the female East german Olympic teams during the cold war had more testostarone than most men!

I suppose before participating in the sports event careful examination of gender is mandatory. Hope Semenya was also tested and allowed to participate in female category. For this hoopla the authorities are also responsible. If the clear line is demarcated between male and female before the sports event, the winner will be spared of humiliation and embarassment due to such doubtful conversations.

Look, chromosomal identity is not something you get to pick and choose (at least for now). It’s a biological fact, and you can “decide” that no more than you can decide your species. But in our society, the concepts “male” and “female” map on to broader things than chromosomes. Even though many of those things are directly the result of chromosomes, many, such as matter of dress, are not. Clearly anyone should be able to decide if they identify with one, both, or neither of these concepts, regardless of what biological similarities they share with most people in their chosen category

If a person is born without female genitals,womb,overies and fallopian tubes, then being a female is out of the question, whatever the person says they feel. Too much is clamed these muddled days to justify whatever is wished rather than what is the practicalities of the situation.

Males produce sperm, females produce eggs. If you can do both you’re a biological miracle – if you can do neither you’re an evolutionary dead end. Trying to redefine those parameters for the sake of sporting rules is an exercise in creative semantics.

No matter how anyone feels about it, the presence of testicles and the lack of female reproductive organs indicate “she” is a male and thus cannot fairly compete with women in an athletic competition as she is. Those testicles need to be removed as they present a cancer risk. I suppose when the testicles are removed and she has female levels of testosterone, then I suppose she might be able to continue her athletic career. Otherwise I think people should be free to live as the gender they identify with.

Tom~
There are indeed many lower species, including earthworms, that can do both (and even stranger things) and all are entirely normal behaviors for them,
but we’re not talking about earthworms.
Putting aside the concept of “miracle”, from a biological standpoint you would have to classify a person who could do both as a new species.

So after all the intrigue and conjecture has anyone stated whether Semenya has all the biological requirements for it to be determined she is a female. How long does it take to establish that fact, unless there is something to hide?